Deaths: Physics giant Hans Bethe

Physics giant Bethe dies at 98

Associated Press

Published
6:30 am CST, Tuesday, March 8, 2005

ITHACA, N.Y. - Hans Bethe, a giant of 20th-century physics who played a central role in the building of the atomic bomb and won a Nobel Prize for discovering the process that powers the sun and the stars, has died at 98.

Bethe, who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1967, died Sunday at his home in Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University announced Monday.

During the World War II race to build the bomb, Bethe, who fled Nazi Germany and joined the Cornell University faculty in 1935, was head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical physics division at Los Alamos, N.M.